Calif. school district buys 14 semi-automatic rifles

FONTANA - Fontana Unified School District police have bought 14 military-style rifles to protect students and faculty in the event of a shooter on campus.

But the $14,000 purchase of the semi-automatic guns has infuriated some school board members, who say that arming school police officers with rifles represents a huge departure in policy.

The weapons are stored in locked compartments strategically located throughout the district, said Billy Green, chief of the Fontana school district's police.

Board members Leticia Garcia and Sophia Green are concerned that Superintendent Cali Olsen-Binks committed the district to a change in policy with no input from the board - nor the community.

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Garcia and Sophia Green said they both have received calls from community members upset with the decision to upgrade the school police department's firepower.

But several parents and students interviewed Wednesday afternoon said they generally approved of the purchase - which came before a gunman shot and killed 20 children and six adults on Dec. 14 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.

But they had reservations, too.

"I'm kind of torn between good and scary," parent Chablis Ruiz said of the decision. "I'm glad they have taken steps to make school a little safer for my two boys, but it bothers me to think about all those bullets that might be fired.

"Every time I hear about a school shooting at work, I worry about my kids. This might help a little," she said in front of Fontana High School.

Lisette Black, 17, a junior, likes the idea of school police with rifles.

"There are a lot of drug addicts around here."

Security is definitely a concern for parents, but some wonder if the guns go too far.

"This is a scary time," Fontana High School parent Judy Gutierrez said. "Everybody wants to take action to make schools safer ... I'm just not sure about this."

School board trustee Leticia Garcia would have liked to have heard more discussion before the district police acquired the weapons.

"I believe that arming the school police with rifles is a policy decision," Garcia said.

And as such, she said the gun purchase should have gone before the school board for discussion.

Because the purchase was below $25,000, it did not require board approval, Olsen-Binks said.

The Fontana school police department is not the only school police unit to have semi-automatic rifles.

Los Angeles Unified School District's police have had them in school district patrol cars for the past 10 years, Chief Steve Zipperman said Wednesday.

He declined to discuss the number of rifles the department has, but did say many are an earlier version of the Colt semi-automatic rifle purchased by Fontana.

Joseph Paulino, interim chief for the San Bernardino City Unified School District, said his department's officers have had shotguns in their vehicles for about 10 years and in July acquired four semi-automatic rifles, made by Bushmaster, which are similar to what Fontana purchased.

These rifles are to be carried in the vehicles of the department's four sergeants, he said.

San Bernardino's plan is to purchase, over a three-year period, .223-caliber rifles for the department's 20 remaining officers.

But there are other measures to protect students, which could have been pursued instead of the purchase of rifles, Garcia said.

If the powerful rifles are ever used, there could be unintended injuries to innocent students or staff, as its bullets penetrate walls.

The concept of buying rifles for Fontana school police officers has been under consideration for at least a year, officials said.

Former FUSD Police Chief William Megenney mentioned it as something that should happen about a year ago.

His replacement, Billy Green, proposed the purchase of the 14 Colt carbines to Olsen-Binks late last year, when enough money to pay for them had accumulated from fingerprint fees charged to prospective employees for background checks.

The order for the rifles went out in October, and they were delivered in early December.

There was no specific incident in Fontana that led to the gun order, Green and Olsen-Binks said.

The Colt LE6940 carbine, which the Fontana district purchased, is a semi-automatic version of the Colt M-4, which is used in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Guns purchased by Fontana police require the trigger to be pulled each time it fires. This differs from the military version, which can be set to fire automatically until it its magazine is empty.

The weapon Fontana school police purchased has a 14-inch barrel - too short for it to be legally sold to civilians.

Fontana's Colt carbines are equipped with metal sights, although it has metal rails along its frame for easy attachment of optical sights, Lasers, a flashlight or other accessories.

Before officers were issued the carbines they were required to take a 40-hour class that included many live-fire drills.

Fontana School Police officer Kyle Crowther had not fired a rifle before this class, he said. He quickly learned to accurately place shots at targets 200 yards away.

Board member Sophia Green is worried that mentally disturbed individuals, knowing that Fontana school police have .223-caliber rifles, will go to more powerful weapons, perhaps in the .30 caliber range, "to try to outgun them."

Instead of spending district resources for more firepower, more effort should be going into helping disturbed students, Green said.

"If a child is having a breakdown, we should see the signs, pull them out of class and get them help," Green said. "We are nowhere near doing all the prevention we can."

No mentally ill person should be gunned down, she said.

Olsen-Binks said that upgrading school police firepower as first responders is part of a broader plan to prepare the district for an active-shooter incident.

Soon there will be training for all employees on how to respond to various dangerous scenarios, she said.